Who would want to look like these guys when you’re in your 60s? We’d all rather “age naturally” like Luke Skywalker.

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The first six months of lifting weights are awesome. Guys gets what’s known in the field as “newbie gains.” You get leaner and more muscular simultaneously. If you take smart supplements, train hard, and eat right, it’s possible to gain 10-20 pounds of muscle while losing fat.

Your shoulders get wider and your waist gets smaller. The feeling of power and strength is intoxicating.

After newbie gains comes the grind. You won’t notice a difference in your body from day-to-day, or even month-to-month. You have to train harder, smarter, and dial in your nutrition.

For a natural trainee, you’ll be lucky to gain 10 pounds of muscle in an entire year. Some years you’ll gain 5.

Unless you are black or have great genetics, it will take you around 3-5 years of consistent effort to build a body good enough where people stop asking, “Do you work out?” People don’t have to ask; they know.

Guys thus turn to anabolic steroids, with predictable results.

Now I’m not going to tell you steroids are dangerous. The dangers of steroids have been overblown. The dangers of steroids are so overblown that if you believe steroids are dangerous, you are no different to me than a mindless feminist.

But.

When you take anabolic steroids, you will relive your newbie gains. You’ll get stronger and leaner. You’ll throw more 45s on the bar. You’ll be aggressive. You’ll know how Genghis Khan must’ve felt when he slayed men, raped women, and enslaved children.

You will gain 20-40 pounds on your cycle.

You will not keep most of those gains.

Once you go off cycle, you’ll begin getting weaker. Without the benefit of synthetic testosterone and other anabolics, your body will no longer be able to sustain your current training volume.

You’ll have to work harder to lift less weight.

Most guys become completely demoralized. “I just did this same weight for 10 reps. Now I can only do it for 6. Fuck this.”

Instead of keeping some of those unnatural gains, the guy quits lifting altogether.

I’ve seen that happen repeatedly.

That said, steroids are not always a no-go. Guys who have already paid their dues in the gym don’t share the same problems as young guys.

If you’ve lifted consistently for 5 years, you’ve had nearly 1,000 workouts. You’ve been “up” for weeks at a time. You’ve added more weight to the bar every workout. You know what it’s like to be in the zone.

You’ve also been “down.” You’ve lifted through sickness. You’ve lifted through break-ups, divorces, the deaths of friends and families. You’ve lifted while wondering if you were going to lose your job, and when stressing about paying rent.

When you have had dozens of shitty workouts, you have the emotional maturity to deal with anabolic steroids. You’ll have the maturity to realize that maintaining 100% of the gains is unrealistic, and that the weeks following a cycle are going to be rough.

Until you’ve had at least 500 hard workouts in the weight room, you should not even consider taking steroids.

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There is hope:

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Instead of asking, “Am I living my life with passion and aggression,” here are the questions that control the direction of nearly every man’s life:

• What would an obese black woman in HR think if she read my blog?
• What would a fat, pasty, middle-aged man who hates his wife do to me if he knew what I really thought about the life of the typical American?
• What would happen if the angry, short-haired cunt in the office next door sent my emails to the above two people?

American men have sold their souls for the privilege of wearing khaki pants, a tucked in Polo, and a daily Starbucks.

Is it worth it?

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When men say that they don’t have time to lift, they are lying to two people – the people they spout that bullshit to and themselves.

But life does get legitimately busy. Last night I was at the office until 8:45. By the time I got to my yuppie scum gym, it was 9:25. The gym closes at 10. What to do?

I do my Break Even Workout. It’s a workout I enjoy so much that I’ve been trying to persuade my boss let me put one of these in the office. I’d omit the cardio portion of the workout to avoid breaking a sweat. But it’d be pretty dope to do sets of chins and dips during the day.

If you perform this workout when you don’t have much time to train, you’ll maintain the gains you earned when you had time for a proper training session. You don’t progress but you won’t regress. In other words, you’ll stay where you are – or break even.

You can actually have a fantastic workout with only 30 minutes if you keep these principles in mind:

• Train your major, i.e., large muscle groups;
• Never stop moving;
• Be intense.

Here’s what I do:

• Stationary bike;
• Dips;
• Chins.

5 minutes on the stationary bike to warm up my muscles and get blood circulating. The goal is not to feel out of breath after a warm up, but to start breathing deeply and sweating. Squeeze those metal handles on the bike to get your heart rate.

Once you’ve worked your way up to a HR at 150, maintain that pace.

After the five minute warm-up, the workout starts.

Find the nearest pull-up bar. If you can’t do pull-ups, use the assisted pull-up machine.

Start with a wide grip. This is super important. You’re going to be dog-ass tired on your last set. With chin-ups, start with wide grip (where you’re going to be weakest, because the biceps are not engaged) and work your way in to chin-ups.

Shoot for 8-10 reps each set, but really, don’t trip. If you can do more than 10, do more than 10. If you can only do 5, whatever. Just get some reps in.

Move right to the dip machine. If the handles of the dip station flip out to allow for a wider grip, start wide. As with pull-ups, start wide and work you way into a narrow grip.

Do your reps. Again, don’t trip. That doesn’t mean you should be a pussy. The set should be hard. But don’t get hung up on numbers.

Just get some reps in. We’re not trying to break world records. We’re just trying to Get It Done.

Go right to the exercise bike. Pedal at a level until each pedal hurts. That’s your pace. Keep pedaling. Depending on your level of fitness, your pulse should be in the 150-170 range.

Pedal for five minutes.

Get off the exercise bike. Get back on the pull-up bar. Use a narrow grip this time.

Do more dips.

Repeat the above series given your time restraints. You should be able to get 4 or 5 sets in if you’re really hustling.

The Break Even Workout also works well on those days when you don’t feel like going to the gym. Maybe you’re too tired for a full workout. Maybe you’re hung over. Maybe your dog died.

Just show up. Do something. Do the Break Even Workout.

Many times I’ve gone into the gym do to the Break Even Workout. After doing some cardio, dips, and chins, suddenly my spirit was lifted and my energy returned. I then did a longer, more intense session.

Guys, as with many things in life, success is often about showing up. We all have shitty days. We all want to kill ourselves sometimes.

You can’t avoid having down days. Happiness is transient and fickle.

But you will not allow one down day ruin the next day.

Show up today and you’ll eventually feel better tomorrow.

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A while back I tried formulating my own protein bar from my home kitchen. It didn’t work out. Food science is best left to the professionals.

I wanted to formulate my own bars because the other bars on the market suffered from the same problems.

Protein bars are loaded with poor quality protein (gelatin), sugar, and the rest of the ingredients list looks like a recipe for Frankenstein’s candy bar.

A friend and male fitness model turned me on to a new brand of bars. These are legit. Look at the ingredients:

Protein blend (whey protein isolate, milk protein isolate), isomalto-oligosaccharides* (100% natural prebiotic fiber), almonds, water, apples, natural flavors, sea salt, cinnamon, lo han guo, sucralose.

Milk protein is a slower absorbing protein. It takes longer for the body digest, and thus leaves you feeling full longer.

Isomaltooligosaccharide sounds kind of freaky, but is actually really good for you for two reasons.

When you eat bread, your body breaks the break down into glucose molecules. The glucose is then used for energy or is stored as fat. Bread is no different from sugar.

Isomaltooligosaccharides aren’t broken down into glucose. There is no blood sugar spike associated with IMOs and IMOs are not stored as fat. Instead, something interesting happens.

Yogurt is good for you because of the beneficial bacteria – the probiotics. When you eat yogurt, you are literally putting bacterial into your body.

When you eat isomaltooligosaccharide, you are feeding those bacteria, increasing the population of probiotics in your gastrointestinal tract. Whatever the bacteria doesn’t break down passes through your colon, leading to epic shits.

Each of these protein bars has 17 grams of isomaltooligosaccharides. That’s a lot of food for your probiotics and the undigested fiber will give you remarkable shits. Check them out.

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Everything is amazing and no one is happy:

Save up to $10 on your first order at iHerb (free shipping for most orders, too!) with coupon code: EKO606. Shop at iHerb.